2 New Lettuce Varieties That Can Stand up to Impatiens Necrotic Spot Virus
Dutch vegetable seed company Rijk Zwaan, following years of breeding research, is launching two romaine lettuce varieties for the U.S. market with a resistance against the impatiens necrotic spot virus (INSV). These varieties are the first in the company’s INSV Defense line.
“We are excited that we can support lettuce growers and processing companies with this breakthrough. For them, this can make the difference between profit and loss,” say Johan Schut and Christophe Thomas from the Rijk Zwaan breeding team.
INSV, which is transmitted by the Western flower thrips, has been a serious problem over the last few years. The economic impact of the damage in 2020 alone was estimated at more than $100 million.
For the Rijk Zwaan team, the INSV Defense story began back in 2005, when they started working to find resistance against the tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV).
“That was the start of a classical breeding journey including the use of advanced techniques like DNA markers,” Schut says. “When INSV was first found in California in 2012, we conducted tests in the lab and found that our trait also worked against INSV.”
The urgency increased when the problems in the Salinas Valley worsened in 2020. By then, the breeding teams in France, the Netherlands, and the U.S. were at an advanced stage of selecting romaine lettuce varieties.
Over the past two years, the U.S. team in Salinas and several dealers have run a total of 49 field trials. These trials confirmed that the selected varieties Farmin RZ and Jammin RZ had high resistance (HR) against INSV. These Romaine lettuce varieties also show good agronomical performance, being well adapted to the U.S. requirements.
Pelleted seeds of both romaine varieties will be available in early 2023.
“We are excited to be able to support lettuce growers and processing companies, especially in the U.S. market. We expect to launch INSV Defense varieties of all lettuce types in the future,” Thomas says.
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